Reflex Testing

Reflex testing is a pre-agreed rule: if a screening result falls in a defined range, the laboratory performs a follow-up test on the same sample without waiting for a new request. A common example is confirming an abnormal screening assay before the result is released.

Why it matters in a hospital

It removes a round trip — sample recollection, a second visit, a day lost — at the cost of committing the hospital to a charge the clinician did not explicitly order. That makes it as much a billing and consent question as a clinical one, and reflex rules that are clinically sensible can still generate disputes at the counter if nobody told the patient a second test might follow. The rules also need review, because a rule set once and forgotten keeps generating tests long after the protocol behind it has changed.

How Trisvio handles it

Reflex rules are modelled in Trisvio's diagnostics schema but are not built — there is no automatic reflex ordering today. A laboratory relying on reflex protocols should treat that as a gap rather than assume it is covered.